


smear your heart on a dirty sleeve

by transvav



Category: Rooster Teeth/Achievement Hunter RPF
Genre: FAHC Au, Gen, Origin Story, although not a great one, anyways OOF gavin's a bastard in general
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-30
Updated: 2019-07-30
Packaged: 2020-07-27 02:04:08
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,470
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20038108
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/transvav/pseuds/transvav
Summary: Southern California's got two seasons: warm and hotter, and Geoff's got about two choices left: sit and wait, or have a little fun before the sun burns them all down to hell where they belong.( this time, get it right, or you're history )





	smear your heart on a dirty sleeve

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Naturallyvicious](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Naturallyvicious/gifts).

> merry secret summer santa springfairy seasons something or other cin! i. had some troubles writing this so it's not my best work but i hope you enjoy!!!!

It was mid-July, high nineties, and Geoff Ramsey sat outside drinking melting ice and contemplated wringing the sweat out of his thin hair. He also, potentially, contemplated a shave‒ the light beard he was sporting wasn’t helping him stop the dripping down his skin.

“Why the hell did I think growing a beard was a good idea in the summer?” he asked into his cup.

It was meant to be contemplative, if not completely hypothetical, but Jack looked over from where she was sitting in the shade (smartly, and selfishly), and raised an eyebrow.

“Told you not to,” she replied, sipping from her own glass. She’d opted for the_ actual_ cold drinks their mechanic offered‒ which consisted of varying sorts of alcohols, from store bought margaritas to shitty brand beers, and one of them had even offered their abilities of mixing a fresh cocktail right then and there. Geoff, on the other hand, gained no favor in being sober, beyond the ‘bartenders’ tight, apologetic smile and an offer of cold water or Sunny D.

“Y’know,” one of their mechanics said from under Geoff’s car, muffled by the five thousand tons of heavy metal above him, “Michael’s got a pool you could dip in.”

“I’m not gonna fuckin’ hop into my mechanic’s fucking personal pool,” Geoff snapped. “It’s bad enough you dumbasses work out of your own home. That shit’s dangerous, get a real shop.”

Jeremy slid out from under the car and wiped the sweat and grease from his forehead (read: wiped the grease sweat _across _his forehead) and grimaced. “We tried, man,” he said, pulling off his tank top and wringing it out. Jack pursed her lips and took a long swig of what Geoff was starting to suspect might have been straight vodka. “Couldn’t afford the upkeep. The only people that really know about us are, well. You know the type. And they don’t really give a shop a good vibe.”

Lindsay came out from the back and confirmed Geoff’s suspicions as to what Jack was drinking by pouring out a bottle of poorly labeled (but nice looking frosty) vodka. Geoff exhaled slowly as Jack downed the cup in one go, and Lindsay snorted.

“Take it easy, Pats, gonna knock yourself out before you get back in your car.”

Jack gave her a side-eyed glare and kept drinking. Lindsay shrugged and nodded at Geoff’s ice-filled cup. “Need a top off, or do you wanna change to Sunny D?”

Geoff slowly crunched on a piece of ice. “Water’s fine,” he said, and laid back in the chair, tilting his sunglasses down onto his nose again. “Still wish you guys would get some Diet Coke.”

“Next time,” Lindsay said, disappearing back into the patio door.

Jeremy turned his headphones up loud enough that Geoff could hear them blaring some pop song the Jones’ had undoubtedly gotten him hooked on. He recognized it, distantly, from the radio from when they’d been on their way out of Los Santos for the weekend, just before the car broke down.

“You always say that,” he said, yawning up at the sunlight. “And you never do.”

  


Southern California was a bitch and a half when it came to summer months, but at least, Geoff reasoned, it wasn’t humid.

“That’d be the drought,” Jack answered, as dry as the air they were in, and Geoff shrugged in agreement, taking a turn a little too sharp.

Jack had cherry red lipstick that looked like it tasted like sunrise, not that Geoff would act on it. She wasn’t too keen on the top being down on the car but Geoff hadn’t paid for a convertible to keep the top on when road tripping long stretches of California highway in the fucking mid-July noon heat. Geoff _also _understood her frustrations, though. Redheads didn’t tan well, they burned, and Jack had redness already spreading across her arms where the sunscreen wasn’t lasting.

Geoff hit the gas, 90 in a 65, and whooped as the wind whipped at his face, finally heading goddamn home again, in the loosest terms of home imaginable.

Los Santos was a shitty fucking place, but not bad as far as crime centrals go.

Movie star ridden corrupt cesspool of fame seeking morons and blood driven dipshits‒ old retired mafiosos and battered old crime bosses made B-list movies that Jack liked to go watch with the Jones’ and Jeremy to get drunk and laugh at. The successful ones, the top tier blockbusters that cost millions to make and earned triple at box, _those _were made by the real criminals.

“To the losses of capitalism,” Jeremy crowed, drunk off his ass and a huff and a puff away from being blown the fuck onto his ass. “God looks down on us and grimaces. We are the worst game of Sims yet.”

“You stole that from Bo Burnham,” Michael cackled, burning his hands on fresh McDonald’s fries in the backseat.

“I stole that from Bo Burnham!” Jeremy confirmed, and finally fell backwards onto the couch. Geoff bit into his sandwich and locked eyes with Jack, who grinned like a maniac and tilted her bottle to him in mock cheers.

Geoff knew Los Santos like the back of his hand, every shortcut and every thief and every corrupt cop in the force. He used to be friends with a few cops, just like Jack had used to be friends with a bank owner down on second, and then things went to shit because that was the way the goddamn world went.

Those cops became detectives.

And Geoff Ramsey said fuck it, catch me if you can, and went and commited a bunch of crimes, because what else do you do when your friends betray you on a Saturday night?

Geoff fell fast and hard into the life, and then found solace in a runaway town of Los Santos, where _everyone _was a criminal so who the hell else would find him there?

And then he laid low so long he got tired of doing nothing, and he got restless.

He took a Sunday night drive and ended up at a mountain ledge, watching the sunrise over his shithole, and, in a moment of whatever the hell, thought to himself, _I should start a crew_.

And, because of his low impulse control‒

He started planning.

  


His first choice was of course, one Jack Pattillo, who he knew from experience was a hell of a good pilot and also a pretty damn good potential second in command.

He made his mind pretty fast about it, too, especially when she smacked him upside the head, lectured him for a good two hours, and resigned herself to having to watch over him. She jumped a car two blocks over from the gas station he poorly robbed and drove him and the cops nuts as they sped away, and by the end, four miles out the city limits, Jack was smiling wide and laughing wildly. When they parked, Geoff looked over and watched her knock her head back against the seat, breathing heavy and still grinning ear to ear.

“Yeah?” he asked quietly, the cicadas chirping around them.

She nodded, took one last long breath, turned up the radio and hit the gas.

  


It’s a measly start, getting big in Los Santos, but Geoff wasn’t a well-known criminal for nothing, and he hadn’t chosen Jack for no goddamn reason.

They both had connections, out of state, and Geoff’s old friend ran a bar _in _state, rather close, with information and friends to turn to. Geoff pulled strings and exchanged favors and a little bit of cash. Got an apartment downtown for cheap, two bedroom, out of the way place, and got a few guns thrown in just as an added bonus. Sixty-forty, even split between them and their _sponsors. _

Jack got shot near the end of autumn of that year. The two of them sat through the winter in low heat and tirelessly planned, and came to a consecutive conclusion.

“We need more help,” Jack said, tapping at the hard-earned half blueprints of a bank. “I don’t know how to do half of this shit.”

“What do you think?” Geoff asked, pulling his blanket cloak closer. “You got demolitions experts up your ass or something?”

“I mean,” Jack said dryly, and suddenly Geoff was not up for the rest of the conversation.

  


She meant Michael Jones.

And Michael _really _meant Michael-Lindsay-Jeremy, because the married couple couldn’t go anywhere without their roommate, who Geoff suspected was part of things a little beyond _‘roommate_’ not that he could prove it‒ (he never would, he lamented years later)‒ so the crew gained one demolitions expert, and two. Two...

Jeremy was a good heavy hitter. He was short but he was built like a fucking _wall_, and Geoff passed him an old pair of knuckle dusters that had used to belong to another close friend, and that was what he was best at, fixing things and punching assholes. He’d gone out one night before a small-time heist and come back bloodied but grinning, red in the face and drunk off his ass.

“I’m gonna punch a ghost,” he’d said resolutely before faceplanting into the hardwood floor and waking up the next morning with a massive headache, from the floor and the alcohol.

That heist had snagged them enough money to goad their way into a bigger apartment.

Michael was self-explanatory enough as a _demolitions _expert to secure himself as that, but Geoff gave him a baseball bat and found him two hours later ‘paying debts off’ in the back alley of a decently popular mechanic shop two blocks from downtown. He also pretty quickly became the muscle for deals.

Lindsay had a great eye for managerial type things, except‒

Well.

_Well... _

She was a fucking chaotic bastard. She did whatever and took whatever and it worked well.

Michael loved his wife but looked continuously mixed between annoyed and affectionate. “I’d like to apologize on her behalf,” he’d said, when they first moved in across the hall in the third apartment building. “She’s a fucking _maniac_.”

“Don’t be sorry,” Geoff replied easily. “I know someone way worse.”

“You know someone worse,” Michael asked dryly. “Than _her_.”

“Unfortunately,” Geoff said, and decidedly did not elaborate, because speak of the devil, and he will _fucking _appear.

  


“I’ve got the luck of the _fucking Irish_, I guess!” Geoff screamed a month and a half later.

“I don’t think that means what you want it to mean,” Jack said gently, patting him on the back while turning down the news.

Midas and the goddamn Reaper‒ “Oh, I’m gonna wring that little fucker’s _neck_!”

“I think he’ll wring yours first, Geoff.”

“Disappears for _years _and then he just fucking rolls into town like he owns the place with his stupid hitman husband‒”

“I don’t think they’re married, Geoff.”

“‒bet you he thinks I _owe him a spot _on my crew, the hell I do _not‒”_

“You’re overreacting, Geoff.”

  


He was not.

  


No one really questioned why two of the most deadly mercenaries in the world had teamed up. No one really questioned how they met, or got along without killing each other‒ (and when Geoff found them in the middle of a murder that was _supposed _to be a weapons deal, he thought it possible that they really did try to kill each other a few times, but they’re both as stubborn as steel and would never give up on trying to finalize it until one bothered the other so much into liking him, because surprise surprise on that front)‒ and now it didn’t matter, because the both of them were there, in Geoff’s _fucking _weapons deal, and for the first time in his life, Geoff almost wanted to call the fucking cops.

Midas gave his patented Bastard Smile (TM) and patted his partner’s arm to get him to stand down.

“Hello, lads,” the absolute bane of Geoff Ramsey’s existence said, pratically fucking laying on the Reaper’s bicep with that catlike smirk and purr in his voice. He had always been like that, for however many thousands of years he may or may not have been alive, clingy and flirty and no one aws ever really sure if he was trying for a relationship with anyone or not.

The Reaper, on the other hand, was like he was in the stories, silent as ever, and eternally tolerant of his partner’s absolute fucking bullshit that Geoff could not understand. He put a hand over Midas’ and tilted his head like a curious puppy and not a mass murdering mercenary.

Geoff, three years into his sobriety, wanted a _heavy_ drink.

  


Gavin had the radio on high, lounging in the backseat as Jeremy worked under the hood. Same band, different song‒ something slower, more somber up until the chorus, and Gavin _loved _the damn thing.

Ryan, ever tolerant with his partner in crime (and it was specific to note that that title went, honestly, to Gavin alone, despite how Jeremy had grown closer to the mercenary as the year had passed), was laying down on cold concrete inside the garage, humming along and occasionally doing half-assed sit ups.

Geoff sipped slowly at his ice water, side eyeing the drink Lindsay slipped towards Jack in her umbrella covered lawn chair. “Different drinks my ass,” he murmured half-heartedly, and heard Michael snort to his left from his place on the pullup bar.

There was a comfortable dynamic to their little crew, now, a familial sort of thing they couldn’t explain, and deep down they all knew it’d develop with type. Gavin had mentioned a few friends he’d grown up with, people he trusted, that could be helpful in certain areas, should they need it‒ Ryan knew some two, and Geoff kept thinking about how Gus owed him a lot of fucking favors. Bringing _that _up reminded Geoff that Gavin knew _Burnie_, too, which was a whole other can of worms that no one was sure how to get into.

Gavin sung along to the radio, louder this time, leading Jeremy to start grumbling threats on turning the radio off. Geoff knew that if he did, Gavin would pull the song up on his phone and blare it through the speakers of the garage, which would set _Michael _off on a tirade, which would set Lindsay off into giggles, Jack into exasperated fondness, and Geoff into the tired old thought of wishing he had a book, and some‒

“You know,” Ryan said from his place on the ground, and Geoff shivered at his voice. “You really should get some Diet Coke.”

“Yeah,” Lindsay said, throwing a wink towards Geoff as she grabbed a wrench and moved to where Jeremy was sliding out. “Next time.”

Geoff heaved a long sigh and smiled.

**Author's Note:**

> my [tumblr](http://transvav.tumblr.com)  
yeethaw


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